


Burial Rites (An Epilogue)

by jurassicgalaxy



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Oneshot, Owen and Beru get a burial, Tatooine burial rites, Working Out My Feelings Through Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 10:45:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11160276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jurassicgalaxy/pseuds/jurassicgalaxy
Summary: Luke returns with Leia to Tatooine after the events of Bespin to take care of some family business left unattended for too long.





	Burial Rites (An Epilogue)

**Author's Note:**

> Tbh I don't know what made me write this, I just have a lot of feelings for Owen and Beru and I wanted to give them a proper sendoff. Hope you enjoy!

**Last Rites:**

The funerary traditions of Tatooine are not like those of other worlds. The Force is strong here, and so are its worshippers, however they come.

These traditions are as ancient as the desert itself. Each family has different customs. They are passed down from parent to child, spoken in hushed, reverent whispers. It is taboo to share these secrets with anyone other than family or bonded partners.

Luke supposes it’s okay when Leia accompanies him back to Tatooine. She’s a part of the plan to rescue Han from Jabba’s Palace, she’s a good friend, as close to a sister as he’d ever had. He supposes it’s alright for her to be here for this most intimate of rites. It feels _right_.

The shuttle they take there is old and battered, a relic of sorts. Chipped layers of pain reveal that before the ship belonged to the Rebel Alliance, it belonged to the Empire, and before that to the Old Republic. Luke supposes it’s quite fitting in that regard. He’s worn quite a few layers himself. The Farmboy, the Ace Pilot, the Jedi. Now though, for this moment, he’s just Luke.

The Farmhouse is exactly as Luke remembers it, if a little dilapidated with weathering and age. The skeletons are still inside, where Luke had dragged them, the heat from charred and fused bone had left his hands a little burned. Luke hadn’t taken the Bacta that Old Ben had offered him. Some things were meant to hurt.

Of course the skeletons are still there, Luke berates himself for having feared otherwise. There are some lows even Tuskens won’t stoop to, desecration of the dead isn't their way. The dead don’t scream, don’t cry, don’t beg, so what worth is there for a Tusken in a fleshless corpse?

Luke wraps the skeletons in the fresh white linens that he prepared especially for this. If he can ignore the way that the sheets curve over the bodies in too sharp angles, he can almost imagine that there is still a little bit of life under there. He can imagine Beru’s smile, warm as the desert breeze, and the unconditional love that shines so brightly in her eyes. He imagines Owen’s gruff hand coming to rest on his shoulders before pulling him into an embrace, the man’s smile that promises Luke he can always count on his Uncle no matter what.

The worst of the midday sun passed hours ago, so that means Luke has to wait till tomorrow to begin the ceremony. He takes advantage of his time by digging. Leia comes and joins him, not taking up a shovel herself (This is for Luke to do, alone.). She watches as the twin suns set on the horizon, there’s a hint of unfamiliar emotion in her eyes.

“Luke, did your Aunt and Uncle... did they ever mentio-“

“Did they ever mention Vader was my father?”

Luke finishes the question, there is something far terser in the way that he says the words. He’s holding more weight on his shoulders, the boyish spark in his eyes is dulled, like a distantly cold star instead of a blazing Tatooine sun.

He hasn’t felt this _dirty_ since the Death Star, since he snuffed out a million and a half lives in the press of a button. To some, he was a Big Kriffing Hero™, and others he was a mass murderer. Luke wonders, with the tightening of his cybernetic hand around the shovel’s handle, if that makes him even more like Vader.

He doesn’t answer straight away, he just tosses more and more dirt and sand out of the hole he is digging.

“No, they always said my father died in the Clone Wars.”

He shrugs at that,

“I don’t even know if they knew. I think the only person that did was Ben, and he’s not exactly around anymore to answer my questions.”

Leia flinches at the bitterness that Luke speaks about Ben with. Still, she hadn’t known the man outside of her own father’s stories.

The hole is dug, and the pair spend their night in silence. It’s not an awkward sort of silence that leaves a palpable wave of discomfort throughout the shuttle, it’s an amicable one that leaves no more to be said between the two. Luke has much to contemplate on for the coming day.

Leia has much to consider herself, she flicks through a datapad almost as old as her that contains much about Alderaanian history and culture. She’s not sure what she wants to do once their war is over, and preserving her people’s history and culture seems a worthy pursuit. Certainly one her mother and father would have approved of.

* * *

Luke’s sleep is restless and fitful that night. Flashes of familiar faces and disembodied voices pass him by, and an overwhelming sense of dread punctuated by a deep, mechanical breathing pumps through his veins and rings in his ears. When Luke wakes, his face drips with beads of sweat that can’t be explained away by the Tatooine heat. The shuttle’s climate control is set to a brisk 16 degrees Celsius, after all.

He gets up and uses the ‘fresher, bathing himself clean of the sweat, but he leaves it at that. Today isn’t about being clean, not cleaned by water anyway.

It starts with a dust bath, ash mixed in with the sand and the salt, lightly colouring Luke’s skin. Once the dust covers exposed skin, patterns and sigils are drawn in the light ash dusting on his hands and forearms, patterns that none but the members Whitesun-Lars Family should know the significance of.

A stark white tunic and matching leggings are worn for this occasion, and Luke cannot help but compare the colouring to the sun-bleached bones of the Krayt Dragons that dotted the wastes.

Twin sets of tubes containing salt, sand, and water are set aside, each set placed at the head of each corpse. And then there is only the wait left. Luke sets aside a tube of Bacta for later.

The twin suns of Tatooine beat down their highest cruelty in the midday hours. It’s typical of a wastelander to hide in their dwelling as the desert becomes an inferno deprived only of flame. Unprotected skin is burned without mercy, dries out in minutes and stretches over bone and muscle far too tightly. This is the time in which the dead of Tatooine are venerated.

Traditionally, the dead would be carried to their graves in the arms of a family member, but the bones are too brittle now, and to break the bones of the dead is to bring dishonour on both the dead and oneself. Luke lifts the pair up with will become Force, and with the tubes in hand he starts the macabre procession from the lowest levels of the house, in the dark places where the air is chilled and stagnant.

Luke remembers as they continue up towards brutal daylight. He remembers Uncle Owen teaching him how to repair speeders and moisture condensers, droids and all manner of other things. He remembers the way the man would hold him tight to his chest after a nightmare, or comfort him when he’d feel sad for no reason at all. Owen was a monolith of a man, and Luke would carry him in his memories until it was his own turn to face death.

He remembers Aunt Beru. He remembers when she first taught him how to shoot one of the shotblasters in the family armory. He remembered the proud look on her face when he shot a Tusken Raider right through its facemask during a raid on the farm, killing the damned thing instantly. He remembered how she’d always cook his favourite dishes and read to him when it was time for bed, how she always took him with her to the Darklighter Ranch whenever she got the chance, and how she always said ‘my nephew’ with the same love and warmth she’d have ascribed to a child of her own.

He reaches the front door of what was once his home, was once a tomb, and what was now to be consigned to memory. He has no intention of looking back at the house if he can avoid it, knowing that if he did then he might not be able to control the tears that threaten to fall.

He steps out into the midday sunlight, and feels the sun flay his skin where the patterns from the dust bath were drawn.

_It’s all part of the tradition._

No words are said as Luke brings the closest people he’d had to parents in the Galaxy to their final resting place, nor are they said when Luke lowers his Aunt and Uncle together into the grave he dug for them.

The pair are placed side by side so they are touching one another. As in life, so it shall be in death. Luke climbs down into the grave, the tubes held hand in hand, the skin that isn’t protected by dust and ash is in the process of turning from pink to an angrier red.

In turn, the tubes of sand, salt, and water are placed. The water is placed above the head. The sand in the left hand, and the salt in the right. Luke doesn’t know why things are done this way. He might have asked one day if things had turned out differently, if his heart didn’t twist in regret for not making it home sooner that day.

There’s a lot about this tradition, these burial rites, that Luke doesn’t know much about. He doesn’t know what the tubes mean, he doesn’t know what the patterns written into his skin by the suns mean, he doesn’t know the words he’s supposed to speak. All he knows is the Force.

Luke feels the Force as it twists through him, illuminating him like so many stars in the black. He extends himself outward, and towards the shuttle he can feel Leia too. She’s bright as well, all fire and incandescence, any smoke or darkness that comes leaves no lasting mark on her soul. She remains in the shuttle per Luke’s request, understanding the privacy that these rituals demand, and Luke is thankful for her, thankful for her being here with him.

He focuses now on the bones. There’s not much left of the starfire that was once their presence in the Force, or at least, their presumptive presence. Luke hadn’t been skilled enough to see as much as he does now when they were still alive. There’s still a touch of heat in the bones, a memory of a memory, an impression of what once was, and never will be again in that form.

Luke knows regret keenly, he knows death as an intimate comrade as familiar as the constellations that shone above of a night. He knows regret, and he knows sorrow here now as well. Luke did his mourning almost four years ago, but now...

_It’s time to let go, son. It ain’t your place to be feeling guilty for this._

He hears that in Owen’s voice, the same that had comforted him when the other children would call him ‘orphan’. Luke wishes he could believe that it was actually his Uncle speaking those words to him, telling him to let go of the guilt that ate him from the inside out.

_Listen to your Uncle, Luke. You’re our boy, seeing you alive is worth this._

And then, the tears come. Luke’s sobs are ragged, wet and ugly, full of so much raw feeling that Luke is sure he’s going to burst apart at the seams. He can feel the echoes of a hug, and the memory of a kiss on his brow, he is warm and not just because of the suns overhead.

* * *

Luke steps out of the ‘fresher for a second time that day. The dead are buried and the dust and ash are washed away from his skin, and his hair seems lighter as well. The places where the thin veiling of soot covered the skin hadn’t changed colour at all, having been protected from the sun. Where the soot had been smudged off into patterns and sigils was a different story however. The skin is bright red, swollen angrily, promising quite a lot of pain later.

Leia holds the tube of Bacta that Luke had set aside some time ago, she squeezes the gel out onto her hands, smears it across her palms, and begins to rub it into Luke’s welts. There’s the beginnings of a lecture at the tip of her tongue, but she can’t bring herself to say the words. She knows what it’s like to lose family, to give them their last rites, burial or no.

Leia had remained true to her word. She had not watched the burial, she had not even come when Luke’s sorrow radiated through her like an open wound. It wasn’t her place to interfere in the traditions of other worlds, but she found some solace in being able to be here for her friend now.

“I received word from Lando and Chewbacca.” She says, sounding as if she were talking about the weather. “They should be here the day after next. They also said Artoo and Threepio are already with Jabba.”

Luke nods, quite apparently a thousand worlds away if his gaze has anything to say about the matter. He doesn’t respond further, only wincing as the Bacta is applied further up his arms. He drinks when Leia puts glasses of water into his reach. The water combats the dehydration, and the Bacta heals Luke’s burns quickly leaving only markings like faded bruises.

It’s an hour or so before Luke speaks again, and when he does, it’s in a whisper just audible to Leia. “My fault...”

“No.” Leia says adamantly, tone brooking no room for argument. “Not your fault. The Empire’s fault. _His fault_.”

There’s no need for further elaboration on who Leia refers to, and the moment Luke opens his mouth to respond, Leia wraps her arms around the closest thing to a brother she’s ever had, grips him tightly, and whispers in his ear.

“You don’t blame yourself, not for this, _never for this_.” She leans her head on his shoulder. “They did this _to_ you, not _because_ of you. They killed them, not you. They took their lives, made themselves worthy of your hate, not you.” She isn’t sure if she’s talking now about Luke or herself, to be entirely certain.

They stay like that for a time. Luke weeps into her shoulder, Leia sings for him in the songs of Old Aldera that Breha Organa had taught her.

The twin suns set again on another day, and the stars come out. Luke and Leia find themselves lying down atop a ridge not too far from the shuttle. Luke stares up at the stars, and he draws the patterns between them, just as he’d drawn into his skin that morning. The patterns match, and Luke _understands_. He smiles in his realisation as he lies there with his sister in all but blood, and he likes to think that there are two more stars in the sky than there were before; looking down on him with their warm gaze.


End file.
